Key Takeaways
- Whale Rock Capital, a hedge fund firm managing nearly $13 billion, sold all its Astera Labs, Carvana and Western Digital stock in the third quarter while building up Meta and SiTime.
- Astera Labs and Western Digital are each down 54% since June 30, the last date the fund reported owning them, while Carvana is up 10%.
- Analysts’ average targets sit 55% above Astera Labs’ price and 107% above Western Digital’s, but just 13% above Carvana’s.
- Astera Labs looks like the sale most worth second-guessing, and Carvana the one to leave sold.
A $13 billion hedge fund just cleaned out three stocks, and two of them have fallen by more than half since it last reported owning them.
Whale Rock Capital’s 13F for the quarter ended Sept. 30, filed Nov. 13, shows no shares left of Astera Labs (ALAB), Carvana (CVNA) or Western Digital (WDC). Meanwhile, it more than doubled its Meta Platforms (META) stake, now its largest at 7.6% of its 13F stocks, and added a third to SiTime (SITM).
A 13F doesn’t say when in the quarter a fund sold, what it got, or why. But it does flag three stocks worth a second look.
Astera Labs’ growth hasn’t gone anywhere
Astera Labs was Whale Rock’s biggest exit: 1.57 million shares on June 30, worth $757 million, or 6.1% of its 13F stocks then. The stock is down 54% since, even though the business is still growing fast. Third-quarter revenue rose 154% to $584.9 million, and management guided the fourth quarter well above what analysts expected, at $730 million to $750 million. The worry is breadth: Scorpio X switches shipped to just two customers in the quarter, and CFO Desmond Lynch said on the call that “the initial Scorpio X platforms have completed much of their initial deployment ramps.” Management expects new customers to get only pre-production shipments this quarter.
TIKR tracks 25 analysts on Astera Labs. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on Astera Labs, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See Astera Labs’ Analyst Ratings
Carvana kept climbing
Carvana went the other way. Whale Rock held 4.27 million shares on June 30, worth $281 million, or 2.3% of its 13F stocks, and the stock is up 10% since.
Sales are booming. Carvana sold a record 217,385 retail cars in the third quarter, up 39%, and now expects full-year adjusted EBITDA at the higher end of $2.7 billion to $3.0 billion. But profit per car keeps slipping: adjusted EBITDA per car fell to about $3,680 from $4,085 a year earlier, its fourth straight year-over-year decline. Not every fund agrees with Whale Rock here: 16 big funds bought Carvana.
Western Digital’s results didn’t sink it
Western Digital fell as far as Astera Labs. Whale Rock held 400,687 shares on June 30, worth $256 million, or 2.1% of its 13F stocks, and the stock is down 54% since.
The company’s own numbers have only gotten better. In its fiscal first quarter, which ended Oct. 2, revenue rose 55% to $4.38 billion and non-GAAP gross margin jumped 14 points to 58.1%. Western Digital guided fiscal second-quarter revenue up 66% to 72% from a year earlier and raised its dividend 17%. The stock fell anyway, and it dropped nearly 8% in early November on a flash maker’s cautious outlook, even though Western Digital sells hard drives.
Wall Street hasn’t given up on two of them
Analysts trimmed their Astera Labs targets after August, but the average is still well above where it stood a year ago:
That $344 average is 55% above the current price, and 25 analysts cover the stock. At about 32x forward earnings, Astera Labs trades below its lowest quarter-end multiple since its 2024 IPO, which was about 44x in March 2026. Its 2027 earnings estimates also went up after the report.
Carvana’s average target has barely moved in a year:
At $82, it’s just 13% above the current price, down from a peak near $97 in January. The stock trades at about 36x forward earnings, below its one-year average of 46x, so some of the froth is already gone.
Western Digital’s average target has more than tripled in a year, and it has barely followed the stock down:
The $613 average sits 107% above the current price, with the stock at about 10x forward earnings. That’s cheap, but hard-drive makers are cyclical. A low multiple on margins that just jumped 14 points can mean the market expects those margins to come back down.
Astera Labs is the one I’d buy back
If I could undo one of Whale Rock’s sales, it’d be Astera Labs. The growth is intact, and the stock is cheaper than at any quarter’s end since its IPO. The risk is concentration: if Scorpio X doesn’t reach more customers in 2027, today’s estimates won’t hold.
Western Digital has the bigger upside on paper, but only if storage prices hold. Carvana is the one I’d leave sold, with the least upside of the three and profit per car still falling.
Whale Rock hasn’t walked away from AI, either: SiTime is now 4.3% of its 13F stocks, and Meta is its biggest bet. Its next 13F is due in mid-February, around the time Astera Labs’ fourth-quarter report should show whether new Scorpio X customers have moved past pre-production.
So what is Astera Labs stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
